Design for Participation

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Since 2021, our UARTS Faculty Engineering/Arts Student Team (FEAST) has explored current theories and practices of the design for participation. We are ideating, prototyping, and testing participatory design pieces to advance our understanding and application of participatory design, which has become a central issue in modern design thinking. As a design and research collective, we understand “participatory design” as the active integration of users in the project or a co-design practice. Our explorations span many domains – contemporary art to customer experience strategies, health education to policymaking, and philosophy to colonialism studies. We want to facilitate a dialogue between a user (addressee) and an artist/designer (addresser).

Presently, our team explores the idea of tea being a conduit of connection for humans in the “World Wide Tea” exhibit series, a collaborative project between students from the School of Information, College of Engineering, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the Stamps School of Art and Design. The project aims to create a fresh approach to designing museum exhibitions. In 2023 and 2024, the Duderstadt Gallery was used as a playground to observe how visitors engage with the artifacts while learning about tea culture, re-establishing personal relationships, and evoking memories.

Tea as a cultural staple has a variety of meanings and significance across communities and popular media; it has played an undeniably significant role in art across genres, including paintings, graphics, and motion art. The “World Wide Tea” exhibit compiles and promotes the exploration of these meanings through video art and the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in conjunction with design elements. The latest exhibit, in particular, allowed patrons to interact with artifacts (teacups) to learn and connect on many tea varieties and preparation methods and their role within modern culture.

In Winter 2025, we plan:

    • Refine our interactive pieces: extend battery life
    • Build solid, sophisticated trigger boxes
    • Work on ergonomics
    • Develop “Tea Cards” interactive environment > go beyond fundamental flip interactions.
    •  Work on projection quality  – output
    •  Work on the sound component
    •  Build project website

Areas of study: industrial design, design science,  graphic design, architecture, information design, electrical engineering, software engineering, light design, music.

Students apply to a specific role on team as follows:

Graphic Design & Video Editing (2 Students)

Preferred Skills: Video editing/video art and or/graphic design skills. Refine current video content, improve sound, cuts and create a stylistic unity with the “Tea Cards” pieces.

Likely Majors/Minors: ARCH, ARTDES, FTVM, SI

Electrical & Software Engineer (2 Students)

Preferred Skills: Help with wireless sensor triggers and software development for an interactive connection between objects, software and video projection. The programming languages needed include ESP32, C/C++, Python, Flask, Socket, React, and HTML/CSS.

Likely Majors/Minors: CE, CS, EE, IOE

Sound Engineer (1 Student)

Preferred Skills: Establish a harmonious agreement between the trigger sounds used at the same time.

Likely Majors/Minors: PAT, SMTD

All team members will work collaboratively.

Faculty Project Lead

Vadim Besprozvany is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in interaction design, visual design and communications, mentors independent studies in emotional design, animation, branding and identity, and design language. He is an ArtsEngine faculty liaison (UMSI) and is interested in growing intellectual collisions and collaborative practices driven by the arts, design, and engineering. He serves as a curator and consultant at the Odesa Contemporary ArtsMuseum (MSIO, Ukraine), and participates in art(co)archive initiative, which is dedicated to Ukrainian contemporary art. Besprozvany’s primary research areas include visual rhetoric, semiotics, media, cultural studies, and communications theory. He received his B.A./M.A.from Tartu University, Estonia, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Students: 5

Likely Majors/Minors: ARCH, ARTDES, CE, CS, EE, FTVM, IOE, PAT, SMTD, SI

Meeting Details: Fridays, 4-6pm

Application: This project requires applicants to include link(s) to your portfolio, work samples, or other website(s) in the personal statement portion of your application to share work you would like considered as part of your submission.

Summer Opportunity: Summer research fellowships may be available for qualifying students.

Citizenship Requirements: This project is open to all students on campus.

IP/NDA: Students who successfully match to this project team will be required to sign an Intellectual Property (IP) Agreement prior to participation.

Course Substitutions: CoE Honors